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I'm running Pages 11.1. I want to insert the current year (so it updates automatically) in a footer, but when I go to the insert menu, it will only let me insert a page number or count; the "Date & time" option is greyed out.
How should I insert a dynamic date in a footer?
I have Pages v11.1 open before me. If I click on any of the six header/footer segments, I get the Insert Page Number floating prompt. Ignoring that, I find that the Date/Time on the Insert menu is not grayed out. By selecting that Date/Time menu entry, a date/time is deposited in the chosen segment. I then click in the body text to dismiss the Insert Page Number prompt.
There are a couple of things to understand. Pages v11.1 does not offer dynamic date/time updates in its documents based on inserting the date/time from the Insert menu. The six header/footer segments, though they may appear as table cells, are not.
What you can do, is insert a table. Set its Arrange panel > Text Wrap to None, and set the rows and columns each to 1. In that single cell, you enter the following:
=now()
and in the table cell date/time formatting choose Year for the date and None for the time. Drag this single cell over the preferred header/footer segment, align the Year with the segment, and then in the table panel, set the Table Outline to None.
With the table cell still selected, visit the Arrange menu > Section Masters > Move Object to Section Master. Now, your table cell is behind the header/footer cell that you placed it in and will repeat on every page of the section. When the year changes, so will the cell year. This is extensible to any date/time format you want dynamically updated in your document when it is opened.
I have Pages v11.1 open before me. If I click on any of the six header/footer segments, I get the Insert Page Number floating prompt. Ignoring that, I find that the Date/Time on the Insert menu is not grayed out. By selecting that Date/Time menu entry, a date/time is deposited in the chosen segment. I then click in the body text to dismiss the Insert Page Number prompt.
There are a couple of things to understand. Pages v11.1 does not offer dynamic date/time updates in its documents based on inserting the date/time from the Insert menu. The six header/footer segments, though they may appear as table cells, are not.
What you can do, is insert a table. Set its Arrange panel > Text Wrap to None, and set the rows and columns each to 1. In that single cell, you enter the following:
=now()
and in the table cell date/time formatting choose Year for the date and None for the time. Drag this single cell over the preferred header/footer segment, align the Year with the segment, and then in the table panel, set the Table Outline to None.
With the table cell still selected, visit the Arrange menu > Section Masters > Move Object to Section Master. Now, your table cell is behind the header/footer cell that you placed it in and will repeat on every page of the section. When the year changes, so will the cell year. This is extensible to any date/time format you want dynamically updated in your document when it is opened.
Thanks for your effort there. I don't know what you mean by segments though. My header and footer just show one full-width box. If I click in it, I get the page number prompt (so it's definitely a footer!), but if I ignore that and go to the insert menu, Date & Time is greyed out:
While your workaround looks functional, it's quite complicated and I can see it being very likely to go wrong, especially with respect to styles.
I guess I'll stick with typing in a new date every year...
Here are the three header/footer "segments" that are customary in a new, or existing Pages v5 thru v11.1 Pages document:
If you opened a Pages '09 v4.3 document in Pages v5 thru 11.1, it would present the header or footer as a single, margin-wide entity with no segments because that was the Pages '09 document feature. The same issues exist as I mentioned previously, in that there is no automatic date/time update upon opening the document, and the single table cell placed behind the top or bottom header is the only "dynamic" solution.
One typically does this work once in a Pages template and future documents are based on that template to avoid repetition or complication. That single table cell has nothing to do with styles because it is behind the document.
Of course, if you were using Word, it has the dynamic date feature.
Ah, it is very likely that this doc has been in '09 format at some point. I'm not producing multiple similar documents, it's one document (a user manual) that has been continuously updated for many years. I can see that Pages offers to export in '09 format, but is there any specific way of making it update to the current format, or isn't that a thing you can control directly? Do I need to copy the whole thing and paste into a new document or something?
I think WordStar had dynamic dates in 1983...
Pages v11.1 will open a compatible Pages '09 document which remains so — until you attempt to make an edit — when a dialog will appear offering to convert the document to Pages v11.1 document format. Once it does that, it is no longer a Pages '09 document but does retain the single segment header/footer. The export to Pages 09 format does not restore any features lost in the preceding conversion that were not supported by the newer Pages.
If you want a contemporary Pages v11.1 document, you open a blank Pages v11.1 document, and the Pages '09 document (which you do not attempt to change). Then you copy the body text from the Pages '09 document into the Pages v11.1 blank document. Any other document objects will need to be copy/pasted separately from the body text.
Pages '09 v4.3 has dynamic dates without using a table cell. Yes, I recall using WordStar and a plethora of other writing tools before and after that, but as to dynamic dates in WordStar, I plead lack of recall.
Date & time greyed out